Our Urban Experience: Day One- William Smith Alternative High School, Urban Peak.

Monday morning. Early, but not nearly as early as when we left for our Rural Experience. This time, we all meet at Kohl's parking lot, south of town. We are heading south to Denver, so we meet there and plan for the beginning of our adventure. First stop is William Smith Alternative High School in Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver.

Change that. Carolyn is driving, along with me in the passenger seat and Robert and Lynn in the back. We are some of the older people in the cohort and coincidentally, all are Republicans ( a great rarity in the Education field.) Over the last couple of months, we have sort of banded together as a small group. We like our coffee. Carolyn decides that the first stop for the day should be to a Starbucks. Nobody argues.

We arrive at William Smith High School pretty much at the same time as all of the other members of the cohort. Maybe they all stopped at Starbucks, as well.

We meet with the principal for about one half of an hour. He explains how the school has been around for about 20 years to so and caters to kids that have not fit into other high schools. They have a strict admission policy and do not appear to tolerate much in the way of behavioral deviation. The school starts at 8:00 a.m. and ends at 12:00 noon (roughly.) This must appeal to many kids, many have jobs and other obligations for the remainder of the day. The school population is about 1/3 hispanic, 1/3 black and 1/3 white.

The thing about the school that is most interesting is that they have a program for teen mothers, including a nursery and classes where young mothers and fathers can learn how to take care of their responsibilities to their children. I had no idea what to expect of this.

We were paired with a number of kids in the school that had volunteered to take us to their classes for the rest of the day. This was a little awkward, but I think that is the point of this whole week, to make us feel awkward sometimes.

I was paired with a young black woman named Jasmine. She was a junior, with a young boy only 10 days older than my baby boy Spencer (22 months.) We went to a number of classes together, including Science, Career Development and Geometry.

I was very surprised at Jasmine and her group of friends. They were fun loving, intelligent and articulate. In their classes, they tended to sit down, take out their notebooks and get to work. They took notes diligently in Science class (which was a little dry for my taste) where they were learning about Lightning and other Weather Phenomena. In Careers, Jasmine and two of her friends were outlining their personality profiles and comparing them to suggested career profiles. She indicated that her main goal was to be a chef. She would also consider teaching Elementary School. In Geometry, I immediately noticed that the teacher hated everyone. Jasmine and her friends confirmed this. The teacher would sarcastically say things like, "Well, let's see how much you math geniuses learned about this chapter..." That was pretty ugly. I helped Jasmin with her Flashlight word problems. Then we were done. I wished her luck.

She was a neat person. I hope that she gets to be a chef some day.

Then... We packed into cars and grabbed some quick lunch. We then headed over to Urban Peak, a "shelter" for homeless teens, aged 14-20. Where our first experience of the day was rather uplifting, Urban Peak felt very alien to me.

Although we were to be involved in an "Urban Immersion" experience, this week was not really that immersive. At our Rural Experience, we stayed in the homes of people in the neighborhood and ate with the families and so forth. Urban is different. Our "tour" of Urban Peak Shelter was extremely uncomfortable. We got a quick walking tour of the facility. As the shelter wishes for the kids to be out working or looking for work during the day, the sleeping quarters are all locked. That leaves us peering through windows to see the bunk beds of the homeless people. It felt like a zoo tour and made me feel like crap.

The only thing that I liked seeing at the shelter was that they seemed to put an emphasis on poetry and art, to help the kids express themselves. The walls were covered with paintings, poems, photographs, etc. Other than that, the experience left me feeling miserable.